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Reminds me of a passage in Jesse Schell's game design book. Playtesters were confused seeing flags of pirate ships blow forward, toward the front of the ship. T
by ambyra 4y ago
Reminds me of a passage in Jesse Schell's game design book. Playtesters were confused seeing flags of pirate ships blow forward, toward the front of the ship. They were told that sailing ships have the wind at their backs, so everything blows forward. However, so many playtesters were confused and made comments that they just made the flags blow back.
Maybe it was the same with the pigs; people just want to see pigs squealing around town, adding to the atmosphere of the game.
- ummonk 4y agoThey won’t blow forward if you’re tacking into the wind though.
- kgilpin 4y agoSquare rigged ships (the pirate ship most people imagine) are designed primarily for speed running with the wind. They would sail more or less down a line of longitude to a trade wind and then sail in the direction of that wind. They could tack of course but they were really not very good at sailing upwind and that was essentially a design trade off to make them better at sailing in the trade wind. Ship builders of that time did, of course, know how to make more maneuverable ships with different types of rigging. These would all be used for different jobs, eg coastal and fishing. But for long distance transport, speed with the trade wind was the most important consideration.
- eloff 4y agoThat would also throw me, it seems intuitive from our land based experience that the flag blows backward with moving things as they push through the air. Like flags on cars. But sailing vessels are propelled by the wind, and usually move slower than the wind as well, so the flags would blow with the wind, forward. I'm sure sailors would not get confused about it, but for people who don't have that experience it seems counter-intuitive. Now if you had a sailing ship moving faster the wind, which is actually possible, I guess the flag would blow backward, well at an angle, because I think you have to be moving at an angle to the wind to go faster than it.
- amlozano 4y agoFor sailing maybe not, but a vehicle can in fact be made that can go downwind faster than the wind https://youtu.be/yCsgoLc_fzI https://youtu.be/yCsgoLc_fzI
- nroets 4y agoSailing downwind faster than the wind is possible. "Apparent wind sailing" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-performance_sailing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-performance_sailing Even more astonishingly are the remote controlled sail planes than not only exceed the speed of the wind, their performance is limited by the sound barrier. "Dynamic soaring" https://newatlas.com/aircraft/dynamic-soaring-speed-record-spencer-lisenby/ https://newatlas.com/aircraft/dynamic-soaring-speed-record-s...
- mcv 4y agoI think it's important to distinguish between downwind sailing and sailing before the wind, which is straight downwind, and cannot possibly go faster than the wind (you'd have a perpetuum mobile if you could do that). From what I understand, faster-than-the-wind downwind sailing involves tacking between broad reaches, where the wind still comes in at an angle.
- pmontra 4y agoModern sailing boats sail windward too, usually at an angle not greater than 45 degrees. Flags blow 45 degrees backward. Old ocean vessel didn't sail much against the wind. They were not built for that, hull and sails. America's Cup foiling boats sail faster than the real wind in any direction (even 3 times as much) so they always experience an apparent wind against them, same as a car or to a lesser degree a bicycle. However they don't have flags, I just checked on videos. They would blow backwards at a small angle, just as on cars.
- mcv 4y ago> America's Cup foiling boats sail faster than the real wind in any direction Against the wind maybe, but I don't see how that's possible sailing before the wind. They're probably never going completely before the wind but instead alternating between broad reaches[0]. [0] I had to look that one up. Sailing terms are one of those things I only know in Dutch, and the English terms are completely alien to me in a way almost nothing else is.
- fijiaarone 4y agoSo pirates only sailed in one direction?
- philipwhiuk 4y agoSailing ships have to tack to sail against the wind, so to an extent, yes
- mcphage 4y agoHuh? How did you conclude that from what you read?
- smsm42 4y agoNo, with skillful use of sails and maneuvering you can go any direction, even into the wind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacking_(sailing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacking_(sailing) That applies to any sailing ship, whether it is manned by pirates or not, of course.
- Retric 4y agoIt’s often described that way, but tacking doesn’t really let you sail directly into the wind. Instead you combine two vectors which on net result in the ship moving in the direction you want on average. But, with noticeable limitations if you also want to avoid obstacles etc.
- msrenee 4y agoThe flags wouldn't be blowing straight to the bow of the boat tbough. On a tacking course, they'd be blowing towards the stern +/- 20 degrees.
- perilunar 4y agoWhat a tough choice: make it correct, or pander to the ignorant? /s
- tsol 4y agoYeah that seems like a strange choice. Why not just keep it in and let people figure out eventually that they just don't know how boats work?
- bentcorner 4y agoThere's a ton of compromises like this in video games. Like "shotgun=short range damage" or the ability for players to alter their trajectory mid-air. Similar changes are often made in the name of atmosphere. Even AC: Black Flag does this the "wrong" way: https://youtu.be/6JwjuwPW8hg?t=891 https://youtu.be/6JwjuwPW8hg?t=891
- mecha_ghidorah 4y agoShotguns being the way they are is less about sticking to what people believe to be true and more about making them feel significantly different to other types of fire arm. If you were to have a shotgun with a realistic spread in most games the gameplay would suffer.
- perilunar 4y agoEveryone does it the 'wrong' way, and we end up with a bunch of ignorant people who don't understand that a flag on a sailing boat indicates apparent wind [0]. It's all very well to claim 'atmosphere', but shit like this ruins the atmosphere for people who notice the details. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_wind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_wind
- eru 4y ago> It's all very well to claim 'atmosphere', but shit like this ruins the atmosphere for people who notice the details. Alas, you are in minority there.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoThis is why bathrooms on ships are called the head. They were placed at the front of sailing ships so the wind would blow the smells away.
- msrenee 4y agoSo, the idea that sails work by the wind blowing on them from behind is a common misconception. They actually work like an airplane wing in some ways. I'm going to skip trying to remember all the technical details from the last time I sailed anything and just say that the head is at the head of the boat, but it has nothing to do with "blowing the smells away". Boats do not always sail the direction the wind is blowing. We'd have never got anywhere before marine engines if that were the case.
- GavinMcG 4y agoYou're speaking universally, but what you're describing is only true about fore-and-aft rigged sails. During the "Age of Sail" those were not common for oceangoing ships, which predominately used square rigged sails and would primarily or exclusively run downwind.
- crdrost 4y agoSquare rigs do not sail directly downwind, at least not if they have multiple masts. You always sail at an angle and tack the yards appropriately. Otherwise the foremast’s sails would luff. Square masts can sail upwind, it's not as effective but you can get 50 or 55° into the wind. Sure, they “primarily run downwind”... the same way cars “primarily drive on asphalt.” It's not that they can't drive on gravel or brick or off-road, it's that during the Age of Sail the main priority was swift conveyance and obviously if that's your priority you try to get back on the highway as soon as you can.
- Gibbon1 4y agoOne time sailing with my dad we tried to launch from a sand spit after the wind came up. Each time we tried we'd get blown back on. We then tried doing it with the sails down and paddling like mad and we made it. We found we could point about 45 degrees into the wind with the sails still down. And so we just tacked across the bay to the dock like that.
- somat 4y agoI did a quick survey of boat games. sea of thieves (rare) does it right. flags fly with the wind. black wake (mastfire) wrong. flags fly with the boat. skull and bones (ubisoft) wrong flags fly with boat. ac black flag (ubisoft) wrong flags fly with boat.
- tpurves 4y agoOkay, lot of bad takes here. As a real-world sailor, here is how this works. A flag will only stream forwards in the special case of sailing dead down wind (DDW). An even in this case, the flag will tend to be limp as the boat will likely accelerate to close to the speed of the wind (dependent on length/hullspeed of the tall ship relative to wind strength etc.). Sailing ships don't often sail DDW because this is not the fastest point of sail. It is usually advantageous, and common, to sail at a slight angle to the wind. On all these other points of sail, the sails are bending the wind around the boat and there is a generally smooth, attached, laminar flow of air on both sides of the sail (if you are doing it right). Even square sails work like this, even though they are not an ideal airfoil shape. This mean the airflow is parallel to the sails. And the flag would also follow this direction and flow close to parallel to the sails as well. There is a concept of apparent wind. The flags will follow apparent wind which is the vector sum of the true wind plus the boat's velocity. That wind direction, combined with the sails effect of twisting the local wind direction, is the wind that the flag is experiencing. Generally the play testers are right, blowing straight forward is usually wrong. here is a picture of a flag blowing on a tall ship that is sailing across the wind: https://sailtraininginternational.org/app/uploads/2016/06/vessel-niagara-7.jpg https://sailtraininginternational.org/app/uploads/2016/06/ve...
- pvillano 4y agoA Pelton water wheel uses a similar effect as sailing perpendicular to the wind. A normal water wheel moves at nearly the same speed as the water and extracts little useful energy, like sailing DDW. Note that the energy of the wind is kinetic energy, so taking energy from the wind slows it down. A Pelton wheel has bowl shaped paddles that, like a spoon under a faucet, redirect the water into the exact opposite direction. The wheel runs so that the rim speed is half the water speed. From the perspective of a single paddle, the water is moving half as fast. From this perspective, the water hits the paddle and reverses to leave at the same speed. From an outside perspective, water hits the wheel and basically stops, transferring all its momentum to the wheel. Conservation of momentum also explains how Veritasium was able to ~sail DDW faster than the wind with a land propeller craft. The propeller spun fast enough to slow down the wind behind the craft, meaning energy was extracted.